[At fourteen years old, William George Elliott was enlisted in the Royal Marines as a bugler. His father (1862-1942) had been a Royal Marine, including duty as Hall Porter, Royal Naval College, Dartmouth]

[…] I looked at the Duty Board one day, and what do you think, I was on draft to “HMS Britannia”. The official name to the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth. My father’s place of employment. So one day later I was at the College, in the Royal Marine’s Mess. There were two Buglers, my colleague had two Badges, so I was under his wing. Soon I was rubbing shoulders with the Cadets of the College, they were everywhere, I did envy them, dodging from Classroom to Classroom at the sound of the Bugle call, their training was strict and various, there was plenty of sport as a relaxation, but their studies took them well into the evening […]

[…]

You cannot imagine what term time is really like unless you experience it. The corridors and rooms are a mass of movement from early morning to pipe down at night, then silence until 630am when the bugles sound once more and the dormitories become alive.